The day started at 4:30am, so we could catch a 7am flight from Nairobi to Kisumu. We then drove another hour and a half beyond Kisumu. I struggled to keep my eyes open until at least 10am as we traveled. But then it got interesting.
We spent the day in an area that reminded me very much of the hill country of Sri Lanka- I have never seen landscape like this in Africa. It's green and dramatic, terraced, rolling hill, cool and fresh- tea country. Poor, but beautiful. We are working with coffee farmers more so in the valley and lower hillsides, where it's a bit too warm to grow tea. We met with members of a coffee cooperative we're working with, and they told us about the projects activities. In a small, dim room for the meeting, I struggled to keep my eyes open.
But then we started the tour! They took us outside and showed us how they sort the coffee berries, then put them through a new sorting machine that works with water, and then showed us the tanks they soak in. It was all so organized, and yet step-by-step simple. I've worked with coffee projects before but I don't think I've ever seen the step-by-step process. We saw the dryers, and scale, and storage area. Then we walked over to the nursery and saw all the seedling coffee trees, plus a few other varieties including papaya, as the cooperative was encouraging their members to intercrop and use shade-bearing trees. We saw demonstration plots of newly planted, and a bit more mature trees, plus a water tank they built to store pumped water from the river to use to run the coffee berry sorting machine.
All set on the backdrop of an idyllic, beautiful countryside! I took pictures like crazy. After a big group lunch they'd prepared for us, we headed out to visit with a farmer that was a member of the cooperative. He had a pretty big farm, and was harvesting his coffee trees when we got there. The coop leadership didn't come with us, so we had a lot of time to talk with him. We talked a lot about growing coffee, and then about some other crops he was growing. One of them was mulberry, and he surprised us by explaining that his wife worked at the silk production center across the street, for which he supplied the mulberry leaves. (More on that in a bit). We met his little grandson, probably about Griffin's age, who cried in fear when he saw me. This is normal- little rural African kids are scared to death of white people if they've never been around them before. We had a lot of time to dig beneath the surface of "the story" and I was once again reminded that although it's fun, I am not cut out to be a photographer. I'm a questioner. I ask people a lot of questions, and I continually question what the project is doing. It's kind of my job and my nature. Being behind the camera is much too static and unidimensional for me. (Though I have a new secret fantasy that our communications team will pick one of my photos for something cool like the annual report!)
Anyway back to the mulberry trees! We walked over to the silk center and were in for a big surprise! It was a little 2-room house full of thread making and spinning equipment. The manager happened to be there, so she walked us through the whole thing, step by step! We saw the worms eating mulberry leaves, the cocoons, the boiling room, and all the machines that did various steps to get the silk into yarn. They also had a weaving loom. Pretty cool! The farmers' wife was one of the main workers in the small center, so it was neat to see the whole family's livelihood interconnected ness.
Other reflections of the day:
1) I don't take near enough notes when taking pictures, so it's very likely I will end up with a thousand photos that I can't explain....I'll keep my day job thanks.
2) Tonight at dinner we worked more....long day!!
3) working dinners after a long day in the field (plus a Tusker) also make for some good innovative idea generating.
4) Semi-crappy African provincial hotels CAN actually have good food.
5) mmmm cold Tusker (beer). Was thinking that Steve used to have a Tusker tshirt a long time ago but I think it disappeared.
6) finally catching up on other work a bit and the internet is down here. Had to have my coworker in Baltimore call my cell via Skype.
7) going to bed!
The photos on my IPhone don't nearly do justice to the countryside. Stay tuned in a couple weeks for the DSLR pics, probably on Facebook. Below is the coops coffee production facility with the backdrop of a beautiful countryside. Then also some drying coffee beans.
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